Carved in Bone

my head. “Put your weapon down,” he said to Art. “And I do mean right now.” Art kept his pistol at the sheriff’s head. “Put it down, city boy, or I’ll by-god blow his brains out.”
    The room was so still you could hear a toothpick drop. Finally Art broke the silence. “You can’t do it, Deputy.”
    “The hell I can’t.”
    “You can pull the trigger, but you can’t shoot him,” Art said levelly. “The chamber’s empty. Sheriff was just cleaning that rifle. Might be some rounds in the magazine, but by the time you can lever one in, I’ll have two bullets in you and one in the sheriff.” I saw the sheriff give a slight nod to his brother, which I fervently hoped was confirmation of Art’s empty-chamber theory. “Put it down, Deputy, and step over here with your hands out in front of you.”
    “Go on, Orbin, do what he says,” sighed Kitchings.
    Orbin complied.
    Kitchings spoke, and he sounded like a different man—a much less certain and much more weary man—than the one who had tried to turn a rifle on me moments before. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Doc. You’re right, she was my cousin. Leena Bonds—Evelina, actually—was her name. She lived with our family for a few years after her folks died, and then she left town. At least, that’s what we’d always thought, right up until now. Leena dated Jim O’Conner. Hell, I think she was even engaged to him. In my book—in anybody’s book—that makes him the prime suspect.”
    “Not if he was in Vietnam when she was strangled,” I said.
    “Do you know when she was strangled?”
    “Not precisely. But the dog tag suggests it was sometime after he left for Vietnam.”
    “So maybe he did it once he got home. Any proof it didn’t happen then?”
    “Not that I know of. But I suspect a DNA test will show it wasn’t his baby she was carrying.”
    The revelation burst like a bombshell in the office. I hadn’t intended to broach the subject of Leena’s pregnancy quite that way, but then again, I hadn’t expected to find myself in a Mexican standoff with two law enforcement officers, either.
    Tom Kitchings sagged backward against a filing cabinet, looking as if he’d been struck. “She was pregnant?”
    “Yes. Four and a half months, best I can tell from the fetal skeleton.”
    The sheriff remained thunderstruck. His brother spoke up. “Hell, there’s your motive right there, gents. G.I. Jim comes home, finds out his sweetie’s been takin’ her love to town—got knocked up in the process—and he goes apeshit. Might have a hard time making murder one stick, but I guaran-damn-tee you we got enough right now to make a strong case for murder two.”
    “I don’t think he did it,” I said.
    The sheriff hauled himself upright from the filing cabinet, then leaned toward me, both palms flat on his desk. “Nothin’ personal, Doc, but I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think. You may be a fine bone detective, but you’re an outsider here. You don’t know the first thing about Cooke County or Jim O’Conner and what he might or might not be capable of. I’ll be gettin’ a warrant for his arrest. I’ll be gettin’ a subpoena for those bones. And I’ll be takin’ it real personal if I catch you messin’ around in this case any further.”
    I decided this might be a good time to make our exit. I looked at Art, and he seemed to agree, as he cocked his head toward the door. “Sheriff,” I said, backing out of the office, “I’ll be on the lookout for that subpoena. Orbin, good to meet you. Y’all have a nice day.”
    “Remember,” said Art, “we’ll have one eye on the rearview mirror and one hand on the radio.”
    As we dashed out the front door of the courthouse, Art said, “Go get the truck and swing around back and pick me up.” I started to ask him why, but he cut me off. “Just do it. I’ll tell you later.”
    The tires squealed as I backed out of my parking space. They squealed again when I slammed the gearshift into forward, and again when I slung the truck around the corner to the rear parking lot. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the two old-timers had ceased whittling and were staring at me, slack-jawed and mostly toothless.
    As I pulled into the lot, I saw Art at the door of the helicopter. As I skidded to a stop beside him, he pocketed a small bottle, then leapt into the truck. “What were you doing?”
    “Oh, nothing,” he said. “Just buying us a little time.” He pulled the